


Learning to be me

by sugarandspace



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arson, Childhood Memories, Gen, Minor Character Death, Murder, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 20:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17567663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarandspace/pseuds/sugarandspace
Summary: "I was living on the streets. I didn't know who or what I was. Asmodeus took me in. Nurtured my darker impulses and taught me the "proper" way to be a warlock.""And why'd you listen to him?""Because he was the only one in the world with eyes like me. He was my father."A thing about Magnus' years with his father.





	Learning to be me

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick thing about Magnus and Asmodeus, a stream of thought written down during an hour long word war. So forgive me if it's not the most eloquent.

All he remembers from his years with his father is anger.

He’d been angry at the world, for making him like he was and taking away so much from him when he was only little. 

It didn’t feel fair. Everyone who saw his eyes called him a demon, a freak, an abomination - he’d had more names than he wishes to remember. 

But not his father. Not the one with similar eyes. His father taught him how to control his powers, how to harness them and use them for his own good.

He taught him that if people already saw him as a monster, he could give them a monster.

He could give them the great destruction.

It went on for a while. His father teaching him and showing him what he was really capable of. 

His father kept telling him that he was destined to great things. Far more grand things than the mortals could ever accomplish. It was a privilege to be a part demon, his eyes a true mark of his power and the powerful family he really belonged to. How he would one day rule beside his father.

Magnus had been thrilled. He was not weak, he was more powerful than anyone who’d tried to put him down. He was basically a royalty, and his actions were making his father - his real father - proud of him.

Thanks to all the things Asmodeus had shown him, Magnus was more than capable of protecting himself, of bringing vengeance to those who had wronged him.

They had been practising fire spells when it all changed. 

They’d been back at Magnus’ home village, setting aflame a place of worship - a bigger building in the middle of the village. It was to show them they had messed with the wrong child. To show them that their words and actions would have consequences. 

It had been easy at first.

It was a dry summer, the fire spreading over the wooden building like ants over a drop of honey. His father had stood beside him, on a rooftop a safe distance away, surveying the damage. He’d been so proud, a hand on Magnus’ shoulder a heavy weight Magnus can still remember to this day.

Only now it brings forward feelings of shame and guilt.

The people had been fleeing the building, frantic and screaming and running. Magnus had felt indifferent about them, those were the people who refused to help him when he was forced to live on the streets, the same people who had mocked him and kicked him down when all he had been looking for had been a kind heart and a helping hand. 

Magnus can still feel how his heart dropped and his blood turned to ice at what he saw next.

The stubborn scowl on his face had melted into a look of horror and regret at the scene before him. 

A small boy, probably around the age of six, was carried out of the building by a man, his small fists pounding against the man’s back as he tried to get down. Tears were streaming out of the boy’s eyes as he screamed for his mother, a mother that was apparently still stuck in the fiery chaos inside. 

Magnus had been frozen, his mind taken back to the moment he’d found his own mother. He remembered the unimaginable pain and sorrow that had filled him, and he found himself in shock over the fact that he was causing the same thing - the same feelings - to someone else right now. He had broken a family, perhaps several, in his attempt to find revenge. 

He had found it, no doubt about that, but it did not make him feel any better.

His father had been unaffected, unknowing of the war Magnus had waging inside in that moment.

That’s why it took him by surprise when Magnus made the clouds gather above them, making the rain fall down on the scene of death.

Asmodeus had been confused at first, then furious when Magnus had explained the change of his heart. He had tried to make Magnus see his side of things, to get him back to the mindset he’d been in when they portalled to the village. But all Magnus had seen was the true nature of his father, and the way how all this time, he’d been working towards his own goal. 

He wasn’t teaching Magnus so that Magnus could keep himself safe and learn to control his magic. He’d seen the potential of his powers and all the ways they could help him.

He’d left his father after that, had gone his own way. The following years had been difficult, living in the world where he feared he could trust no one. Feared that all everyone was looking for were different ways to exploit him.

But even though a part of him felt bitter for it, thanks to his father he did have a better understanding of his powers now, and walking the word was easier when he could blend in by hiding his eyes. Hiding them from others as much as hiding them from himself. Pretending like they weren’t there. He could get food, could find shelter, and most importantly he could protect himself. 

It took awhile for him to find his own path, to find out what magic meant for him. He went by the name Magnus Bane as a reminder to himself about what had shaped him to a person he had turned out to be, as well as a reminder not to become like that scared child again. 

He had a colourful past filled with loss and destruction but he had made his way out of that, to a spacious loft in New York in the 21st century. He’d gotten himself into a position where he could help people, through his title of a High Warlock as well as through his relationships with the rest of the Downworld. His relations to Shadowhunters now as well.

He was a better man now, and while there wasn’t a way to erase all that he had done with his father, to take away all the pain he had caused, he could keep that in mind and work towards being better. 

It was up to him to decide what he used his powers for, not anyone else.   

**Author's Note:**

> [You can find me from tumblr too!](https://www.sugarandspace.tumblr.com)


End file.
